It's a great remake, but the story and gameplay is middling. The combat is way too easy and requires very little thought and absolutely needed an MP system to prevent me from cheesing several fights, especially considering you get Full Restored after every battle. I appreciate how the storylines are homages to the tropes of popular movies and games. Reference culture is cool when you get it, but creates a cliche and dissatisfying stand-alone product. The main problem I take is that it didn't out-western, out-Mecha or out-2001 the original properties, nor subvert them. I've played or seen close to all of these influences, so I didn't gain anything from playing Live-A-Live in my understanding of how to tell these stories well. It makes passable, but functionally worse choices than the original properties made, which makes me question the creator's intent beyond paying homage. I don't dislike the game at all: it's fun, cute and pretty, and the bite-sized narrative structures made it very digestable and paceable in a way I think a lot of chunky RPGs could benefit from. Those just aren't the reasons that I play RPGs, it's two weak points are. As is, I can't but help feel that it was a testing ground for the much stronger and more polished ideas of Chrono Trigger.